Can I Put Two Samsung SSD's (Evo/Pro) In Raid?

[VagabondWraith]

Or does it have to be the same exact model?

 

I'm in need of another SSD as I only have 32GB left on my EVO. I was looking at the 850 PRO this time around.

 

Another question: should I go with 250 or 500 GB SSD? I can't decide. I'm not sure if I wanna spend a $160 bucks on a 500 gig or spend $84 on 250.

 

Another thing: if I got the 850 EVO 500GB, could I do RAID with my 250GB EVO, or does it need to be the same exact size?

 

Sorry for the questions I just need some help.

 

 

[FuzzyYellow]

I believe you can, but they would both be limited to the speed of the slowest drive.

[Smooth Bunz]

1. It is preferred that you use the same brand and model ssd when doing raid
2. Get a 500gb ssd they are perfect!
3. To do a raid you need to have the same amount of space on each drive or the raid could become unstable

[vanished]

Yes it should work. It's not like SLI, it's actually very tolerant.  Apparently you can even put drives of different capacities in RAID, never mind different models or manufacturers (but I would strongly advise against that).

 

You should be fine though

[pwn_intended]

Yes it should work. It's not like SLI, it's actually very tolerant.  Apparently you can even put drives of different capacities in RAID, never mind different models or manufacturers (but I would strongly advise against that).

 

You should be fine though

You CAN raid 0 a 250 and a 500, but you will just be left with a 500 gb partition and half of the 500 drive will go unalloccated. So it would be totally pointless.

[Sakkura]

You can put any two internal storage devices in RAID. You could RAID a 120GB SSD with a 4TB HDD if you were crazy enough. For best results you should try to match the capacity and performance as closely as possible.

[VagabondWraith]

Thanks guys!

[rcarlos243]

I suggest getting a single large drive instead.

 

You won't notice any difference in performance.

 

Even an old SATA2 3Gpbs SSD loads as fast as Intel 750NVMe PCIe SSD.

 

 

If you have plenty of RAM, you could use RAM drive or RAM cache and get sequential speed in excess of 5GB/s depending on how fast your computer is.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there VagabondWraith,

 

Basically you can put any two or more storage drives in a RAID array (a 60GB SSD, a 8TB HDD, 2TB SSHD, 64GB SD Card and a 32GB Thumb drive all in the same array). The RAID controller will automatically format all the drives that are set in the array, limit every drive's capacity to the one with the smallest and the speed of every drive to the one with the slowest. Moreover, the more differences between the drives in the array (firmware, type, speed, capacity, manufacturer, etc.), the bigger the chance of a drive dropping out or corrupting the data on the whole array. This is why it is recommended to use similar/identical drives when building a RAID array. 

 

Captain_WD.

[VagabondWraith]

Hey there VagabondWraith,

Basically you can put any two or more storage drives in a RAID array (a 60GB SSD, a 8TB HDD, 2TB SSHD, 64GB SD Card and a 32GB Thumb drive all in the same array). The RAID controller will automatically format all the drives that are set in the array, limit every drive's capacity to the one with the smallest and the speed of every drive to the one with the slowest. Moreover, the more differences between the drives in the array (firmware, type, speed, capacity, manufacturer, etc.), the bigger the chance of a drive dropping out or corrupting the data on the whole array. This is why it is recommended to use similar/identical drives when building a RAID array.

Captain_WD.

Thank you. I bought another Samsung 250GB EVO, exact same model as the first. Must I reinstall Windows to do RAID 0? What do you recommend, RAID 0,1 or 5? I know a little bit but any major disadvantages?

Thanks again.

I do need to do a clean install of Windows as I just upgraded.

[Captain_WD]

Thank you. I bought another Samsung 250GB EVO, exact same model as the first. Must I reinstall Windows to do RAID 0? What do you recommend, RAID 0,1 or 5? I know a little bit but any major disadvantages?

Thanks again.

I do need to do a clean install of Windows as I just upgraded.

 

Yes, you'd have to do a fresh install of the OS on the new RAID array since the drives will be formatted. Here's some good explanations from Linus on the topic:

 

With two drives the only options that you have are RAID0 for speed and RAID1 for redundancy. You'd need a larger amount of drives for the other types of RAID.

 

Captain_WD.

[VagabondWraith]

@Captain_WD

Thanks buddy. I'll check out the videos when I get home from work. Appreciate it!

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Any time! Post back if you have other questions.

 

Captain_WD.

[braneopbru]

For what it's worth, I have a pair of EVO 840 120GB in RAID 0 on a Maximus VI Formula and I get over 1 Gigabyte/s reads and writes.

[VagabondWraith]

Any time! Post back if you have other questions.

 

Captain_WD.

Okay, so I watched the videos... and what I'm most interested in is RAID 10. I like the idea of having drives available in case of a failure. I want the speed of RAID 0 with the security of RAID 1. This interests me the most.

 

So my question is, I'm guessing I need to buy 2 more 850 EVO's for a RAID 10 setup, correct? That would give me 1TB of data across 4 drives with 500GB usable in this particular setup. Can I mix and match capacities in RAID 10 (say 2 250GB and 2 500GB?), or would I be limited to the lower capacity drives?

 

Another question I just thought of, what if I did RAID 0. That gives me extreme performance but with no fail-safe. Isn't that exactly like having just 1 drive anyway? I mean I have 1 HDD in my laptop but if that goes, I'm screwed. (Unless I decided to do backups.)

 

I'm thinking RAID 0 then I'll start doing scheduled system backups. I want the extra performance without losing space.

 

I see benefits to both. But I'm more interested in speed & performance at the end of the day. But if I do RAID 0, I'll be sure to schedule frequent system backups.

 

Let me know your thoughts on this and I thank you for your time and help.

 

EDIT: just realized I contradicted myself between RAID 10 and RAID 0. :lol: I'm MOST interested in RAID 0.

[braneopbru]

The odds of any ONE drive failing remain the same. The odds of total data loss in case of a drive failure are doubled since a failure of either one of the drives will destroy your data.

 

I use my two 120s in RAID 0 strictly for Windows and software. If suffered a drive failure, I could be back up with all my software re-installed in a couple of hours. I have a 1 TB WD Blue for my games and storing files before they get moved onto NAS for archiving.

 

I would not waste money for redundancy on a boot/software drive.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Yes, for RAID10 you will need at least 4 drives. It iwll give you a good speed boost as well as good redundancy. Having four SSDs in the system would give you the storage space of two of them as usable. If you have two 250GB ones and two 500GB ones, you'd be limiting the larger ones and will have 500GB of usable space and 500GB reserved for redundancy (the rest 500GB will not be used at all). 

 

Using RAID0 will give you only speed boost and you need only two drives to do it. What it does is it splits the data into two parts and writes half of it on one drive and the other half on the other and the two drives appear as one single larger drive for the OS. If a drive fails, the data won't be complete without it's other half so you'd lose everything.

 

Having a Striped array (RAID0) with scheduled backups is a good idea! Just make sure they are often-enough so you won't lose a significant amount of data in case of failure. 

 

Captain_WD.

[VagabondWraith]

@Captain_WD

Nevermind. I've decided against it. I read more articles about RAID and the performance difference is negligible. Just not worth it for me.

Nevertheless, thanks for your time.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Any time! Feel free to ask if you happen to have other questions or if there's anything else that I can help.

 

Captain_WD.